For our Old Testament reading, please turn in your Bibles to the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 11. And our reading will be verses 1 through 11. Isaiah 11, verses 1 through 11. Listen to this. This is the very word of God. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
In that day, the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples, of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. In that day, the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. And now for our New Testament reading, let us return to the gospel according to Luke chapter six, and our reading will be verses 17 through 19. Luke 6, 17 through 19.
And he came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast Tyre and Sidon who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.
Thus far the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray for his blessing to be upon it now. Father, as we come to the ministry of the word now, we pray that you would wield your word and let it be like a hammer that breaks the rock. Let it be like a fire. Let it be like a sharp two-edged sword. Let it go forth and accomplish what you desire and let it succeed in the matter for which you sent it. Wield the power of your gospel even in our midst, we pray.
And we ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen. Not all that long ago, as we’ve been going through the gospel according to Luke, we read of that account when Jesus preached in the synagogue in his hometown. He was in Nazareth and he got up to read the scriptures and he began to speak.
And he made a couple of observations in his message to the people that deeply offended the people of his hometown. He mentioned the fact that in the days of Elijah, there were many widows in Israel. And in the days of Elisha there were many lepers in Israel. And he points out that Elijah didn’t go to any of the widows in Israel, but he was sent to a woman of Zarephath. And Elisha didn’t heal any of the lepers in Israel, he healed Nahum, an Assyrian. And when the people of Jesus’ hometown heard those things, they were deeply offended at him. In fact, they even attempted to kill him on that occasion. We’ve heard that, we’ve read that and been through that passage.
But when Jesus was making those points, he wasn’t deliberately trying to offend anyone, of course, but what he was doing was prefiguring the proclamation of the gospel to the nations. That even under the old dispensation, even before the time of his coming into the world, Messengers of God were being sent to the people of the other nations as well. He’s prefiguring the gospel and its proclamation to the Gentiles. Now, what just happened in the passage right before the one we’re looking at this morning is Jesus called all of his disciples together, of which there were many, and from his many followers, his many disciples, he appointed twelve and called them apostles. He identified them and Then after the passage we’re looking at this morning, Luke is going to proceed to give an account of an extended passage of Jesus’ teaching. It corresponds very closely to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. But in this passage, Luke is taking a short pause, so to speak, to give a summary of the Galilean ministry of Jesus, which, as we’ve seen already, extended already far beyond Galilee.
And what this passage teaches us is that the gospel message and the healing power of the Lord Jesus are for all the people of the earth. The gospel message and healing power of the Lord Jesus are for all the people of the earth. So, the three points we’ll consider this morning. First of all would be that this passage serves as an introduction to the Sermon on the Plain. Introduction to the Sermon on the Plain. And then we’re going to see the universal audience for the gospel. And then finally, the unlimited power of Christ to cleanse and to heal. So first of all, this passage does provide a little bit of a prelude, we might say, an introduction to the Sermon on the Plain.
In Matthew’s gospel, you’re probably aware that the gospel of Matthew as a whole is kind of divided into sections, and it’s organized around these five major discourses. of our Lord Jesus. And the first of those five major chunks of teaching in the Gospel of Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount. It’s three chapters long, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 comprise what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Luke chapter 6 verses 17-19 our text this morning sets the stage for what has become known as, referred to as the Sermon on the Plain. because Jesus in Matthew it says He went up on a mountain, He sat down and the crowds came to Him and He preached and those three chapters of proclamation He delivered on the mountainside and so it’s called the Sermon on the Mount. Here in contrast it says that Jesus after calling the twelve to Him He came down with them, the twelve, and He stood in a level place. So we call this the Sermon on the Plain.
There are a lot of similarities, of course. Both of those discourses, the one in Matthew and the one we’re about to look at in Luke, they both begin with the Beatitudes. Just peek ahead to verse 20. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. That’s how the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew begins. So they both begin with the Beatitudes, although even the Beatitudes aren’t identical.
Luke’s are more brief, which is a little unusual for Luke, but Luke’s are more brief and slightly differently worded in some cases. And then both those sermons on the mountain and on the plain conclude with that parable that Jesus taught that all of us since Sunday school have known about the man who built his house, the wise man who built his house on the rock and it stood firm when the floodwaters came. In contrast to the man who built his house on the sand or who built his house without a foundation. rains came down and the floods came up. His house was destroyed. So both the sermons begin and end the same way, but that’s about all the similarity that they share. There is some similarity in the flow and the content, but there are many differences.
The next time you sit down and read either one of these, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, I think it’s safe for us to assume that that’s not an exhaustive account of what Jesus taught on the mountain that day. The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to write those things that he did write. But if you ever just read straight through the Sermon on the Mount, how long did it take you? 10 minutes if you read fast.
So there had to have been more content. What has been recorded for us is written for our instruction. It’s written for our good. But neither of these, certainly not Luke’s, but even Matthew’s, should be assumed to be exhaustive. Jesus said much more on those occasions than what’s recorded for us in the scripture. and as I say the Holy Spirit carefully determined what would be recorded.
You can go on the Internet and you can look up musicians in Wikipedia and pick a favorite musician and if you search for them you can find a list of every song they ever recorded and then probably information about how high it got on the charts and so on and so forth. But you can find every work that was released by an artist, every piece that was composed by a composer. That’s an exhaustive list. Scripture isn’t doing that with the teaching of Jesus, not in the Gospels anyway.
There are two times that the Apostle John says, Jesus did much more than this. He says, I just recorded these things so that you can believe. in his name and believing in him you may have life. John says Jesus did many other things. He said if they were all written down, there wouldn’t even be room in the whole world to record and to recount all that he did.
So the things in the Bible aren’t a complete record of what Jesus taught, but here’s the important thing for us to remember. The things that are written in the Bible and that were conveyed to us via the apostles about Jesus and his teaching and his works in the New Testament are sufficient. They’re sufficient for us. They’re everything we need for faith and for life.
Now again, the fact that there are some significant similarities between the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. That teaches that Christ taught the same doctrines everywhere he went. His message didn’t vary in terms of its content. He didn’t say one thing in one place and then something contrasting or contradicting or conflicting in another place. He taught the same principles to all the people everywhere he went. His teaching was consistent.
But the fact that they’re different teaches us that Christ varied his messages a little bit based on his audience, based on the circumstances. So it’s the same teaching, but he maybe vary the order in different places, change the wording just a little bit. We may even look into some of the reasons why Luke records certain statements in certain ways based on not only the audience that Jesus was speaking to in the moment, but also Luke’s intended audience when he wrote his gospel, which was predominantly Gentile. But we can comfortably say that Matthew and Luke recount two different sermons, I think, two different occasions. Some some authors will argue very strenuously that they’re actually talking about the same event. I don’t think that’s the case. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Does it? It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s at stake.
And what we’re going to do is, as we move into this sermon of Jesus that’s recorded in Luke’s gospel, we’re going to seek to consider mostly the Sermon on the Plain on its own terms without drawing too much in from the Sermon on the Mount. But we’re not to the Sermon on the Plain just yet. Today we’re looking at the introduction only and so there you have it, an introduction to the Sermon on the Plain.
These verses show how, show Jesus as the one who was given for the healing of the nations. the one who is given and sent forth to proclaim a gospel for the nations. And that brings us to our second point, the universal audience for the gospel. And by universal, I mean transnational, all people, every nation, tribe, and tongue, not just one nation, in other words. The passage makes reference to three distinct groups of people. We see the first one referred to with the pronoun them.
He, Jesus, came down with them. That’s talking about the 12. He had just appointed them. We read their names and learned a little bit about them last week. And they, He came down with them. from the mountain and stood on a level place. So the first set of people would be the 12. The second set of people would be the great crowd of disciples that the text speaks of. Those were other followers of Jesus. Those are no doubt people that are referred to in verse 13 that we looked at last time. He called his disciples. all of his disciples, and then he appointed 12. So you’ve got the 12, you’ve got the other disciples, and then finally you’ve got this great multitude, as the ESV text puts it, this great multitude of people, and it says they’re from Judea and Jerusalem, and that would be Jews.
And I think when it refers to Judea, there was a district in the south of Palestine that was the district of Judea, as opposed to, say, the district of Galilee. They had different governors. But when the term here, Judea, is used, I think it’s best for us in this context to take that to mean just the Jewish people, all of them, from various districts. So people from all Judea and Jerusalem. So you’ve got Jews. But then you also have great multitude of people from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon.
Those are Gentiles. And this can be seen As a partial fulfillment, the beginnings of fulfillment of Psalm 87, 4, where it says, among those who know me, I mentioned Rahab and Babylon. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Cush. This one was born there, they say. Christ has people from all those places. Babylon. Philistia. Tyre. And that fulfillment of Psalm 87, four is going to continue and it’s going to expand. But it starts here.
So this was an international audience because Christ desires and intends a universal audience for his gospel. Now in verse 18, it says of this multitude that they came to hear him. And you notice as we see this pattern continuously in Luke’s gospel especially that to hear in verse 18, to hear comes before it says they came to be healed. So once again, his teaching takes priority. That’s the number one emphasis. The message precedes the miracles. We wanna maybe work towards coining a little phrase to express that theme in Luke. The message precedes the miracles. That’s the pattern we see over and over again. So Jesus didn’t lead off with miracles to try to draw a crowd. He wasn’t like some performer who did something amazing to draw people in and then he delivers his message. That’s not how he operated.
His miracles, rather, confirmed the authority of his teaching. And Jesus had a very diverse audience, as we can see from this passage. He had his inner circle. And he had the 12, and then the other disciples, and then other Jews would come to hear him, and then beyond that, people from foreign countries. And he paid attention to them all. His teaching was for them all. His healing was for them all, regardless of how closely they were associated with them or how distantly. Because in doing this, what we see him doing in his teaching and in his healing in this passage is acting out those words that he speaks elsewhere in the gospels.
Come to me. Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden. I’ll give you rest. We see it being worked out here as we have this universal audience for the gospel. But then finally, we see in this passage, Jesus’ unlimited power to cleanse and to heal. because verse 18 does say that they came to hear Him. But it also says they came to be healed of their diseases.
And the text mentions diseases, that comes from the Greek word that refers very specifically to physical maladies. We’re talking about sicknesses. Some of you are battling sicknesses right now. Some of you are recovering from some. So that’s what people were coming to be healed of. But then it refers to another class of affliction.
Because it speaks of those who were troubled with unclean spirits. Now, just as a little bit of a reality check here, you know that skeptics and unbelievers will assert that people in ancient times ascribed maladies that they couldn’t understand to the activity of evil spirits. You know, these people didn’t have advanced Medicine like we do they didn’t have the capability to to diagnose illnesses To the extent that we have and so when something was happening to a person in their body And they didn’t know what in the world was going on. They just say oh, it’s an evil spirit And that’s that’s the accusation that’s brought and that’s the assertion that is sometimes made when people speak of these occasions of demon possession demon oppression that we read about in scripture. Oh, it’s just some kind of illness. They just didn’t know what it was. They called it that.
But you see here how Luke even makes a distinction between sickness and between the troubles that are brought on by evil spirits. So we see here that in the first century, people, including gospel writers, were able to distinguish between bodily diseases and demonic activity.
And Jesus had both types coming to him, and he was able to make both types well. He could heal any disease, and he did. And he could cast out any demon. He could cleanse those who were oppressed. Matthew Henry makes the observation, some were troubled in body, some in mind, some had diseases, some had devils, but both the one and the other upon their application to Christ were healed for he has power over diseases and devils.
This passage highlights the power of Jesus. Verse 19 for power came out from him and healed them all. You remember back in chapter 5, verse 17, Jesus was teaching, and it says, it just makes this side comment, and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. See, that’s because Luke is emphasizing this aspect of the power of Christ. It’s important to Luke. It’s something that he continues to bring out. Christ’s power is a thematic emphasis in this gospel.
And what we need to really take note of here, based on that statement from Luke 5, but also especially the end of our text for today, is that Christ’s power never ran out. There was never an occasion when there were more sick people than Jesus had power to cure. There was never an occasion when there were more demons than Jesus had the authority to cast out. Or was there ever a demon that was too strong for Jesus to cast out? His power never ran out. So again, Matthew Henry makes the observation that there is this, there is this fullness of grace in Christ. Enough for all and enough for each.
Luke relates this account of multitudes coming to Jesus and all of them being healed of their diseases and afflictions. Jesus healed his Jewish countrymen and healed foreigners. We see Jesus here. We could say healing the nations, which reminds us of that vision. that the Apostle John saw when God showed him the bride of the Lamb coming down out of heaven. And what he sees is this city coming down to earth from heaven, the New Jerusalem. And in the New Jerusalem, John saw the tree of life in the very midst.
And he said, that its leaves were for the healing of the nations. The ministry of our Lord Jesus in this passage wasn’t just a preview of glory. It was a down payment on our hope of glory, our hope of eternal glory. Were those the leaves of the tree of life that are for the healing of the nations? Jesus is the tree of life. And we’ll go there one day and be with him where there won’t be any more death. There won’t be any more sorrow. There won’t be any more pain. This is what he offers in the gospel. And he offers it freely to you today. Let’s pray.
Father, what an awesome picture it was that you showed the Apostle John of the New Jerusalem and all of its beauty, its splendor that was beyond the ability to even fully describe. And he saw the river. of the water of life, and he saw on either side of it the tree of life, that tree whose leaves were for the healing of the nations.
We thank you that the reality of that is brought to us in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. May your grace through him And through the power of your spirit, apply in Christ to us. Heal us, Lord, of our maladies. Heal us of the wreckage that sin has made in our lives. Strengthen us to strive for holiness, we pray. We thank you for the message of the gospel, and we thank you that you didn’t just send it to a few select people, but that you send it to all the people of the earth. May we receive it by your grace, in Jesus’ name, amen.